ourselves in, and the last night president obama called myself and the speaker and maybe others from hawaii and asked if there was something we could do to avoid the fiscal cliff. i would say we're frustrated because we've been asking the president and the democrats to work with us on a bipartisan agreement for months. literally for months, a plan that would simplify the tax code and shrink the deficit, protect the taxpayers and grow the economy. democrats consistently rejected those offers. the president chose instead to spend his time on the campaign trail. this was even after he got re-elected and congressional democrats sat on their hands. now republicans have bent over backwards. we stepped way, way out of our comfort zone. we wanted an agreement, but we had no takers. the phone never rang, and so now here we are five days from the new year, and we might finally start talking. democrats have had an entire year to put forward a balanced bipartisan proposal, and if they had something to fit the bill, i'm sure the majority leader would have been able to deliver the votes the president wou